My Life is an Experiment with Truth and Integrity

Born into a Dominator Society

I am a human who was born into a dominator society. I was born into a position where at times I am the dominator and at times I have been dominated. I was born into systems of oppression and exploitation. I have been oppressed and I have been exploited, but more so being born a US American, I have oppressed and exploited others through globalization and industrialization.
 

Liberating Myself from Systems of Oppression and Exploitation

Given this, I have chosen to live my life as an experiment with truth, as an experiment with integrity.

I say experiment because it is not within my immediate capability to fully transcend these systems of oppression and exploitation. These systems are all expansive, embedded in nearly every facet of our lives, and they are designed to hold us in. I also do not have examples in my day-to-day life of people who have fully broken free and are living in full truth and integrity.

I am experimenting with liberating myself and I can say that I have made great strides since I began this experiment over a decade ago in 2011. Yet I hope these great strides are only the beginning of my life of experimenting with truth and integrity.
 

Liberation of Humanity

Although my intention is to liberate myself, this is only in part about my own liberation. I aim for the liberation of humanity. Of course, I am not able to liberate humanity myself. I am not even able to liberate one human among the eight billion, except for myself. Liberation is something that can only come from inside of ourselves. There is only one thing I definitely can control and that is myself. I say this both from a place of belief and from a place of strategy.

Over the last few decades of getting to know myself, I have learned what my strengths and weaknesses are. I have come to learn what fuels me. I’ve come to learn that we all have gifts to offer one another and I’ve learned what my gifts to humanity are. I’ve learned that living in truth and integrity are both my strength and my weakness. I have learned that living in truth and integrity is what fuels me each day and is what gives me the deepest purpose to exist. I’ve come to believe that the greatest gift I can give to those in my life is to live in truth and integrity to the best of my ability.

Thus, I have chosen to live my life as an experiment in truth and integrity.
 

My Life as an Experiment with Truth and Integrity

My choice to live simply
My lifestyle of living closely connected to Earth
My actions to live in harmony with our plant and animal relatives
My dedication to healing myself to become whole and complete
My focus on compassionate communication
My pursuit of universal love and compassion
My work to find contentment, joy and meet my basic needs
My efforts to overcome my biases and the dominator culture within me
My perseverance to overcoming the delusion of independence and live with interdependence
My self-reflection to accepting my own impermanence
My daily struggle to abolish all hatred, anger, and fear inside of me, including a belief that I have enemies
My diligence to overcome attachment to material possessions and financial wealth
My choice to live in service to Earth, humanity and the plants and animals with whom we share this home.

These are all part of this experiment to live in truth and integrity. I wasn’t taught how to do this for the first few decades of my life. In fact, I was taught the opposite of much of this way of being. Yet, my belief is that by living in this state of self-responsibility I can aid others in living in this state as well.
 

My Hopes for Humanity

My belief is that as a humanity, if we can live in this state of truth and integrity, we can move toward universal responsibility. We can reduce unnecessary suffering as a humanity and for our plant and animal relatives. We can see the crumbling of the structures of the military, prisons, police brutality, industrialized agriculture, corporate corruption, inequitable control and power of politicians, racism, sexism and all systems of oppression and exploitation. In the place of these structures we can build systems that take into account the rights of all humans, all plants and animals and Earth. We can create a state that allows  all beings to create their own happiness. We can return to a state of harmony.